Your Trading Nylander. You need a fast good skating playmaker with great hands and great puck retrieval numbers who scores 55-60 points per season consistently and you can only pay them 3.5m or it's not worth it. Who do you get? You can't have a Nylander trade without a top 6 skilled playmaker to play with Matthews or JT and it's not worth trading Nylander unless you can get half his contract in AAV back in the deal. Convince me you can make this work and that if one of the big players need to be traded it's not Marner remembering JT has a full NTC.

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Just came here to say I agree with you.

It’s the Tavares contract will be the reason why Toronto won’t be a threat. Kadri is a great 2c inexcusable move by Dubas. Nylander is an amazing player on a great contract.

Regarding the contracts the issue I have with TOR is a lack of... coherence (for the lack of a better word) between the AAV and the term for AM's and MM's deals.

For AM: 5 years at an 11,6 mil AAV

This contract is bad and you can actually choose the reason why that is.

Option 1: to fix it keep the AAV but add 3 years
Option 2: to fix it keep the term but lower the AAV to 10,5

For MM: 6 years at a 10,9 mil AAV

Again, 2 options to fix it:
Option 1: keep the AAV but add 2 years
Option 2: keep the term but lower the AAV to 9,5 mil

If you choose to lower their AAV, well the team would've more cap room
If you choose to add term, well then the team would've their young core locked up for longer


I literally don't get how Dubas couldn't get one of these options done. Oh, and by the way for the record I'd choose to add term

I wouldn't complain about anything contract wise regarding the Leafs if DUbas got one of these options done

"A great 2 c" ? He was an average 2 c, while Tavares is second only to Malkin in that department.

Please explain how the Matthews contract is “bad”... would love to hear how you would have signed him.

Maybe «bad» isn't the best term here but not anywhere near enough term

Fine would you rather have an average 2c for 6 million dollars less so you can make actual improvements? Signing 3 bad ex Sabres players and Joe Thornton isn’t going to help. Brodie was a good move though.

So his ask was around 13.2m on an 8 year term. With absolutely no leverage to the leafs as there would certainly be an offersheet what do you do?
Would love to here the reasoning.

Marner should be making 1-1.5m less. No doubt there. Matthews, you just have to pay him.

Not a chance Matthews would've asked for a penny over McDavid LOL

Do the leafs need a player like that though. You think Tavares and Matthews will suffer that much without him? Matthews scored 40 next to Johnsson and Kapanen on his line and they both scored 20. This team can develop forwards and they are good at it. Not defense though. I don’t want to lose Reilly to free agency because we can’t resign him to a FAIR CONTRACT. If we can trade him for a really good RD still on their ELC and is in the NHL I’m more than happy trading him. But there aren’t a lot of those for sale.

Simmer played 7 games for the sabres lol, vesey and Bogo I guess you can count but Bogo at 1m? Nothing wrong with that. Same goes with jumbo vesey and simmer.

Leafs top6 and top 4 are full. They were only adding depth. I thought they did a tremendous job. This is my favourite leafs lineup in about 20 years.

if he was actually willing to meet with all 31 teams in free agency, then all 31 teams would have been meeting with him, "inexcusable" what a joke

100% did. He actually asked for exact Mcdavid percentage.

So Matthews says “sure I would love to sign here for 8 years. 13.2m and not a penny less.”

Your turn...

have to remember how depressing playing buffalo is, ROR lost his love and lehner became an alcoholic

I would, actually. Tavares is a 1c on most teams. And the leafs got him for free (asset wise). That's a deal you do all day. It's not even debatable that Tavares and Kerfoot> Kadri, even if you have to pay 9 million more.

Why do you need that? You’ve got two fantastic centers that are extremely well paid. Once the leafs built their cap structure like that, high end wingers became a luxury that they might not be able to afford. How many times has Crosby turned a kind of middling winger into a good player by his side? Obviously, Sid is a special player, and i don’t think anyone would argue that Matthews or Tavares came anywhere close to Crosby in his prime.

This entire conversation isn’t, “trade nylander because he isn’t good.” Or “trade nylander because you don’t need him.” Rather, it’s, “trade nylander because this team needs to spend money on something that isn’t a top six forward.”

It was widely reported that he did, so not sure what you’re looking for out of the all caps lol. For 8 years he wanted 13.8 per.

But not many teams have an Auston Matthews. That’s the point I’m getting at. John Tavares is a great player, but Toronto shouldn’t have signed him.

I disagree. He's been phenominal in blue and white. 2018-19 he scored 47 goals, 88 points. Better totals than Matthews.

If that's the issue, then Matthews and his agents are insane. Or give him a Point like deal (more AAV tho) and then give him his big deal after his bridge

I get signing JT helped the team in quite a few ways(consistency among others) but it was just bad timing. Now, I don't believe that keeping JVR to the deal he got in PHI would've been smart either but the team had other things to worry about before signing JT.

Like TOR is one of the only teams to be in cap hell WAY BEFORE they were even close to a cup, and that's an issue. Sorry.

Coming back to the timing thing: it would've been perfect to sign JT but 2 years later, maybe even 3, who knows

Right. Apparently he wasn’t signing that contract.

Do we know who his agent is?